


A Very Brian Christmas, or B/J versus exploitative capitalism

by LadyJane_BBJFE



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Christmas, Crack, M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 14:39:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8894545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyJane_BBJFE/pseuds/LadyJane_BBJFE
Summary: Abominable!Brian, serious Elf!Justin, amorous bears, overworked reindeer and a very Cracky Christmas.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm posting an old fic in honor of the holiday! Brian and Justin versus the crony capitalism of Father Christmas. 
> 
> But seriously, this is very, very silly. I trash Santa, and there may be some reindeer corpses strewn about by the end, so that's a "maybe dead reindeer" warning. Also, bad, bad poetry by the possibly not-quite-literal bears. But there are kittens!! And a happily ever after.

Part I

Once upon a time, there was a wee little elf named ~~Rand… Harri….~~ Harry? Whatever, let’s call him Justin. Now, Justin was a very unhappy little elf indeed, because his job in Santa’s workshop, while an important one, was not very glamorous. You see, Justin’s job was to carve and paint the letters into the wooden blocks for toddlers and babies. Justin liked kids just fine. He knew this because he kept repeating “I like kids, I do! I do!” in his head at random times while at work, just to remind himself. So he was able to like kids and even got an OOC urge to cuddle 3-year olds every so often, but he still loathed baby things such as, you got it, blocks. He got the ang… _frustration_ out of his system with some target practice with the gun he wasn’t supposed to carry due to supposed anger issues, which he totally did not have. People _said_ he had anger issues. Like the judge at that bullshit trial! They were obviously _jealous_. It wasn’t his fault the world sucked! He had a right to be angr… _frustrated_ with it! 

You see, Justin’s real problem was his job. He liked the idea of important work he didn’t have. While working at his bench in Santa’s Workshop, Justin daydreamed of taking down major political oppressors, such as, for instance, bad judges or oppressive police chiefs, or defeating oppressive legislation, or servicing the gigantic penises of two hot guys at once in a way that was not at all oppressive. Instead, poor Justin was stuck carving wooden blocks for babies. No one ever made a fuss over wooden letter blocks. They made fusses over cabbage patch dolls, which the elf Greta got to make, or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle accessories that were assigned to Peter. 

The problem for Justin was two-fold: one, babies were too young to pester their parents, and so marketers didn’t try to sensationalize the product, and no sensationalism meant no excitement which meant no vicarious thrill for Justin who had very few of them (the ginormous hot penis fantasy was just that, a fantasy, as most of the boy elves were chasing the girl elves or pretending to; Justin had his suspicions). Secondly, blocks were a default product. Everyone knew babies liked blocks, and toddlers started learning with them, so every baby in the world ended up with a set. No block mystification was required to sell the damn things. Nothing was required at all. Parents bought them the same way they bought diapers; without thought, without fuss, and then spelled out “CAT” and “DOG” for their children who would abandon the blocks long before they even thought to spell “FUCK OFF AND DIE MUMSY” for themselves. There was no drama attached to blocks; usually babies couldn’t even stack them. In fact, any number of Justin’s arguments with other elves (their opposition was driven, Justin was convinced, by the other boy!elves’ frenzy of denial regarding Justin’s perfect ass), any argument Justin had with the straight-my-ass boy elves usually ended with his opponent taunting him with “Go back to your teething toys!” Since Justin liked to argue, having no response to “blocks are for babies” was infuriating. 

On the day of his yearly review in January (down time at the North Pole), Santa finished giving Justin his yearly solid review, and Justin screwed up his courage to ask for more. 

“Any questions?” Santa asked, stroking his beard and looking a bit bored. 

“Actually… yeah, I have a question.” 

Santa looked up, surprised. 

“I’ve put in for a transfer before, and I’m just wondering… Can I be moved to work the Wii?” Justin blushed. 

Luckily, sexual entendre sailed over Santa’s head. Santa heaved a great sigh. “Unfortunately, Justin, while your work is wonderful, all the positions are full! Plus, well, there was that unfortunate incident…”

Justin managed to stifle his groan. He had hoped that had been swept under the rug; it was YEARS ago. “Well, that _was_ years ago, and I had hoped my steady and loyal work had proven how I feel about the workshop.” 

So here’s what happened. Justin had used the blocks for Good, to Fight Oppression. A couple years before, an elf named Chester had started a campaign to pen Santa’s reindeer. The campaign had divided the Workshop, since the reindeer made the Pole seem less like a work house, and more like a zoo. It was fun to be able to claim one had found Dancer doing his reindeer-thing in yet another corner of the workshop, or behind the Barbie display. And dodging Prancer’s reindeer bombs as he flew overhead had become quite the game. 

Not all the elves were quite so amused, it turned out, and Chester led the van. Justin, who had heard the whispers about Chester and his pal Leon, launched a counterattack. For four days in row, the elves had arrived to the Workshop to find “Lunkhead Leon kills baby reindeer in spare time!” and “Bad Chester finds baby reindeer drowned in lake and buries the evidence! What’s he hiding?” spelled out in the baby blocks, only without punctuation since the blocks were only letters. 

On reflection, it seemed rather strange to Justin that it had taken Santa four days to figure out that Justin was the block-writing accuser. In any case, Santa had not been amused when the matter came to light. “The blocks are not for political campaigns! I may not like Bad Chester’s ideas, but he’s going about it the right way, coming straight to me!” 

“You don’t like Bad Chester’s ideas? But isn’t that the point?” Justin had asked. 

“No,” Santa said firmly. “You used the resources of the Workshop, and tainted the Christmas spirit.” This, of course, was the worst thing imaginable. “We’re about the spirit of giving! Not reindeer killers! I’m sorry, Justin, I’m going to have to suspend you, unless you apologize to Chester for your tactics.” 

Apologize to a reindeer oppressor! No way! Justin had slept in the barn for a few nights, until that lunkhead Leon was discovered trying to strangle Vixen’s youngest. An investigation was launched into Chester’s involvement in previous reindeer deaths, and then Chester had quit in a huff which only confirmed everyone’s suspicions, and a lot started coming out about how big a dick that guy was, which apparently everyone had known all along. Trying to pen up the reindeer like that. OMG oppression!! 

And so Justin returned to his blocks, and he was even briefly grateful, but only briefly because Santa had forbidden him to actually spell anything out with his craft, and Justin didn’t dare amuse himself, not even privately with scurrilous messages Daphne could read from across the room. Too many of the other elves knew what had happened and too many of them were ready to suck up to Santa by ratting Justin out. 

So his position was precarious there for a while, and it looked like he was going to be stuck with blocks forever. 

Unless! 

Trudging away from his interview, after Santa had firmly reiterated (again) that no, Justin couldn’t be transferred, and yes, he would have to wait (again) for more openings in the other toys, Justin began to scheme. Now, Daphne would say that Justin’s schemes had gotten him into all sorts of trouble (i.e., “block wank”), but in reality his imaginary schemes provided Justin with mental challenges he did not receive from his work. Carve-A-paint-red-carve-B-paint-blue was hardly what one might call deep intellectual material. And Justin had scored top marks on his elf!exams, so really, he ought to be in charge of at least the Barbies by now, if boy elves were allowed to handle girl toys (they weren’t). So Justin began to think. 

He thought, this isn’t about the openings in the other department; this is all about position. And right now, Justin was low man on the totem pole, not because he had been wrong about Chester (because oh my god he had been SO RIGHT), but because he had abused the toys for immoral purposes, i.e., used them in his personal life and not with a thought to the welfare and joy of the babies and their parents, the true Spirit of Christmas and the nature of the totally honorable, but not very well paid elf!work. 

So! It wasn’t really about right or wrong apparently, it was about standing, and right now Santa had a hairy eyeball on Justin. So Justin came up with a scheme, and it was a good scheme, if he did say so himself (Justin approved of himself quite a lot). 

You see, Santa had an enemy. Yes! It is hard to imagine, what with the generous giving and spirit of the most wonderful time of year and all, but Santa indeed had an enemy, which simply goes to show that not all the dicks are hot and hard, but some are just plain wrong-headed. So to speak. The elves all spoke of him in hushed whispers, calling him the Abominable!Brian, or “The Grumble”, after one of the villains in the cartoon Brian had created to promote Santa’s work (which he later called “total horseshit,” but that was after he’d clearly gone crazy). The story went this way: Once, lo, long ago, there was an elf named Brian who had gone bad, insulting children, and implying that families weren’t all worthy of love and happiness, and some even deserved to go to hell! BLASPHEMY! And this from an elf who had apparently handled Santa’s PR, devising some wonderful Christmas specials and the coup de grace, “A Clay Aiken Christmas,” before starting to tell the others it was all bullshit and Christmas could be a particularly horrifying time of year! Well! Santa couldn’t put up with THAT, now could he? Brian had been banished to the south. 

Apparently, he went to Canada, because those people will put up with anyone. Rumor was Brian had holed up somewhere close to the North Pole, where he’d evilly instituted an anti-holiday/no-fly zone over his section of ground. There were even rumors The Grumble had actually taken pot-shots at Santa’s sled on Xmas eve if and when it came too close! 

This was a real problem. Canadians were ALWAYS on Santa’s "good" list, but Santa had been forced to get to them last because 1) the direct route was now the new road to Baghdad, and 2) his sleigh needed to be as light as possible to avoid the potshots Grumble!Brian took at the sled as it flew over. Most years, Santa ran out of the best toys before he even got to Maine, and the Canadians so totally deserved the best toys (whereas the Mainers, being Americans, totally did not so that was all right). Santa lamented this completely unfair state of things. The horror of it all was made worse because the Canadians never got angry about the unfair treatment, accepting an inferior position with "It's not aboot us! It's aboot Santa's generosity and universal love, eh?" (The Mainers, on the other hand, were fairly pissed off. So far, they’re four votes shy of the two-thirds necessary to declare war on the North Pole, with the Santa-is-a-Terrorist PAC busy working the problem.) All this gave Santa angina, and Justin thought preventing Santa from keeling over, while it might not get him in good with Santa since Santa was kind of a bastard, Mrs. Claus (sometimes called “Debbie”) might appreciate it. Surely she’d put in a good word for Justin with the big guy! The elves working in Debbie’s kitchen (girls of course, but the girls liked Justin) sometimes heard her bitching about how risky Santa’s flight over Canada had become, what with the Grumble taking potshots at the sled as it flew overhead. 

And, bonus points: Justin could fight Oppression, his favorite hobby!! Taking shots at Santa’s sled, that was just oppressive and wrong and shit! Justin decided this was the perfect opportunity for him to fight the Grumble’s oppression of the Spirit of Christmas, while scoring massive points with Santa which would surely result in a promotion to the Wii. Now, if he could just find the Grumble and take him down! So Justin tossed on his cute little pink shirt, grabbed his pistol, and he and his perfect ass took off to the south, to find the Grumble!Brian, and take him down. 

Oh, Brian went down all right. Just, not at all like Justin expected.

 

Part II:

And lo! He trudged long, and the way was difficult, but Justin, a wee dot on the barren, snow-swept landscape with naught but a pink shirt and a babushka rag on his head to cover the gleaming white-gold silky…

“HEY!!” 

Justin whipped up his head from whence it bowed against the stormy onslought, receiving a face full of snow and wind. "Fuck!" he yelled. Looking to his right, he saw a man... the _most beautiful man on the planet_. Okay, this was Justin’s first trip outside the North Pole, and he was prone to hyperbole, but still. The man was HOT. Justin could tell, through cashmere coat and cashmere scarf that wound about the perfectly concealed neck and the mirror sunglasses that hid eyes that surely glowed perfectly with banked amber fires. Justin didn’t think his frozen bits could get more stiff, but there they were.

“What the fuck are you doing wearing just that pink shirt in this weather? Where the fuck are your pants?”

Justin looked down. Sure enough. “…I was in a rush?” 

The stranger circled him slowly. “Nice ass.”

Justin blushed. 

“Huh. Nice gun. And the pistol will come in handy, too.”

Justin began to realize he was at a distinct disadvantage, and made a note to himself that pants were essential when traveling. 

“You should come in, the bears are going to fucking eat you alive.”

“Polar bears are stalking me?” Justin squeaked, following the perfect beauty behind an enormous white drift, where a compound was concealed in the snow. 

“Polar bears?” The stranger glanced back, to glare at two big men who had crested the hill just behind the oddly appealing midget who’d shown up at his door, but only replied, “Nah, you’re all set.” He opened a door and stood aside to let Justin into his huge house, nudging him through the front foyer and into the enormous living room, where light poured in through the skylight, and a fire crackled merrily in the hearth. The stranger unwound his scarf, and took off his sunglasses, throwing his coat over the back of the coach.

Holy. Fucking. Shit. He had been right! Well, of course he had been right. He was elf!Justin, after all. 

“I know,” the stranger grinned. “And, will you look at that! We can help you there.”

“Oh, wait, what…?” Justin started the nervous stutter thing as the most beautiful man in the history of the world (or at least, that Justin had ever experienced) approached him. “Oh, hey! What… wait a minute… oh, okay… okay, that’s okay… All right, oh, okay. Wow.”

…

“Wow.”

“You expected less?” 

Their naked bodies were wrapped around each other in front of the fire, and the stranger pulled away to light a cigarette. Justin rolled onto his back, turning his face toward the skylight. Huh. Why were there balconies ringing the glass? Justin didn’t care. He wanted to do that again. “I didn’t expect anything at all.” He realized this was his obnoxious voice, but the stranger didn’t react. Huh. Everyone reacted to Justin’s obnoxious voice. 

“Yeah, what’s your name?” 

“Justin. I’m an elf!”

A snort emanated from the perfect profile of the man, ruining the perfect circle rings he'd been puffing. “Yeah, aren’t we all?”

“You’re an elf? Who are you?” 

“Name's Brian.”

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The object of his vengeance quest, his most hated enemy, his perfect lover!? It could not BE! It was not to be bourn!! It…

“What. The. Fuck?” Brian sat up, and too late, Justin realize that he had sprung up and was ranting aloud. 

“But… but! NO! You _can’t_ be Abominable!Brian!! Your penis is too perfect!”

Brian shrugged and lit another cigarette, relaxing. “Abomicock!!” He chuckled.

“No!!! Seriously! You can’t be him!”

“What the fuck is your problem? If you want to shout…” Brian gestured toward his lap. 

“NO!! I mean, YES!!! OMG, I’m so confused.” Justin dropped to his knees, which just happened to be the perfect height for Brian’s mouth to reach his extremely confused elf!bits. Brian took advantage.

….

“Feeling better now?” Brian asked, after. 

“We can’t keep doing this!” Justin moaned. 

Brian sighed. “Okay, not better. Roll over.”

….

“Better now?” 

Justin said nothing, lost in a blissful haze. He hummed.

“Much better,” Brian smirked.

…

“Okay,” Brian said later, handing Justin a third drink. Damn, the kid was a lightweight. And way over-excitable. Brian kind of liked it. He was feeling a bit put out by how much he did like it; WTF? The kid clearly had issues. But that _ass_. “Now, why do you need to kill me?”

“I’ll kill you with kindness,” Justin leered, reaching out to grab Brian’s dick.

Brian reminded himself to feed this kid whiskey. A lot. 

…

Part III

 

Sometime in November, Justin thought he should be getting back to the Pole. It was nice here, though, even if they were snowed in again. After all, it was Canada; the snow never actually went away. Justin liked being snowed in with Brian. Still, he was feeling a bit torn in his loyalties. He was so invested in becoming the best elf he could be, and now he wondered if he should get back to elfing at the Workshop. He shared his feelings with Brian, knowing that was probably a mistake. 

Of course it was a mistake. “So, leave. I know you’ll leave. You know you’ll leave. It’s what you _do_. And then you’ll think, Hey! I have no pants! I should find Brian, he’ll know what to do about that. And so you’ll come back. You do that a lot too.”

Justin had left twice already, once because Brian wouldn’t get him a kitten. The second time the bears had lured him away by composing odes to his hair, which Brian, again, wouldn’t do, but then had added insult to injury by laughing at the gesture. Laughing! 

“They wrote me a poem! YOU never wrote me a poem!” Justin cried. He was tired of being told he had a great ass, great dick, great sucking action. He wanted to hear about his _hair_.

Here is the poem the bears wrote Justin:

Thou shrill ravishing princess of gold  
Thou foster-child of Thunder, so alone  
Sylvan princess elf love, who canst thus express  
A shimmering tale more sweetly than our poem  
What golden story haunts that pretty head  
Of sweetened smile, gold hair, or of both  
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?  
What elf or god is this? What perfection?  
Our mad pursuit? What struggle to escape  
Abominable! To wild ecstasy!

Brian’s brows wrinkled. “Are you serious?”

“It’s romantic!!” Justin yelled. 

“But…” Brian began.

“YOU NEVER WROTE ME LOVE POEMS!!” Justin screeched, and then stomped off to the bears’ cave. 

…And stomped back two weeks later. Brian had central heating, after all. Plus. “You should have told me they were fucking each other! I was the only one in their asses, they said! It was romantic, they said!”

“Pffft,” Brian answered. “Romance is bullshit, I said! Do you really think you’re the only one they write poems to? I tried to tell you.” He handed Justin a piece of paper. This is the poem the bears had written Brian, back in the day:

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede   
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,   
With forest branches and the trodden weed;   
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought   
As doth eternity. Cold Pastoral!   
When old age shall this generation waste,   
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe   
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,   
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty"---that is all   
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

“But that’s Keats,” Justin exclaimed. 

“So’s yours, only apparently they’re smart enough to revise now. You should see what they write for the penguins.” He shuddered.

“They’re PLAGIARISTS?!” Justin shrieked. 

Brian shrugged. “You expect romantics to be original?”

“Fine,” Justin answered, disgruntled that he had lost the charm of the personal ode to commemorate his disastrous foray into Twu Wuv, but happy enough with the current warmth in his elf!bits. “You know what is original? My dick in your ass.”

He was answered with a burst of laughter. “You know what’s more likely? Your mouth on my cock for the duration, and I just may decide to keep you.”

“Hm… okay, so a relationship is all about compromise…”

“Relationship?”

“Let’s compromise by fucking whenever we want, whatever we want.” 

“No more odes.”

“I promise.”

And so it came to pass that Brian woke up one day in early winter realizing their subsequent two-month fuck-o-rama had put him behind schedule. When Justin wandered into the cavernous living room later that day, he found Brian up in the balcony, mounting a small device that pointed out through an opening in the sky light. He climbed the ladder and saw that there were a number of small openings up there; the skylight was Plexiglas and custom built to accommodate the devices that Brian had mounted around the balcony. They pointed in various directions, from the horizon to the sky directly overhead. 

“What are you doing?” Justin asked. “Oh, cool! You’re setting up telescopes to watch for Santa, aren’t you?” 

Brian glanced over and heaved a great sigh. Sometimes Justin’s knee-jerk denial was just plain annoying. “Look,” he began, and then hesitated, thinking twice about what he was going to say or, more specifically, how he was going to say it. It wasn’t that Brian had learned anything (he did NOT NEED TO LEARN SHIT THANK YOU VERY MUCH) from laughing at Justin’s attraction to the bears’ romantical plagiarism, or even from Justin’s reaction to Brian’s threat that the evidence of a solitary cat hair would result in a single-minded hunt and a veritable feline abattoir. Maybe Brian had been a bit harsh. So no, he hadn’t learned crap about himself, but maybe he had learned something about how tender wee little elves could be, and maybe he should not attack Justin’s sensibilities if he planned attacking his more interesting bits at a later date. 

So he led Justin down the ladder, away from the skylight, and carefully sat him in front of the fire, where he could stroke his tender sensibilities along with his more interesting bits. Not forgetting, of course, the hair.

“Justin, Santa’s a capitalist asshole who’s exploiting free elf labor and killing off the reindeer. He creates this huge mythology about love and caring so everybody spends a shitload of money at Christmas time, and the toy stores and whatnot give Santa a 1% kickback for his services. Plus he’s a homophobe.” 

“NO!!” 

“Of course he is, why do you think you never got promoted to the Barbies out of blocks when there was an opening?” Justin had related the sad tale during the kitten argument, when he was trying to get Brian to understand his need for love. And to think, Justin thought, Brian had actually listened to the Barbie story! OMG he loves me soooo much! Maybe I can try the kitten again…

“Justin!” 

“Um… I thought I never got the Barbies because I was under review for abusing the baby blocks?”

“Nope, sorry, Santa’s a heteronormative prick who’s responsible for that rigid gender imprinting as a model. It’s good for business; easy to buy generic crap based on gender, not actually knowing a kid. Only girl elves in Mrs. Claus’s kitchen. Only boy elves on the GI Joes. Why do you think I left? The only way to make peace with myself was to blow Santa out of the sky!”

Well. He’d considered considering Justin’s tender sensibilities. Justin had to appreciate Brian’s consideration. Ha! Fat chance. Brian knew what Justin really appreciated. 

Justin gaped in shock, but something began to penetrate. Oh, no, wait, that was Brian fucking him again. 

In the afterglow, Brian smoked a cigarette and used it to point at the “telescopes” around the skylight. “That,” he pointed, “is a .30 caliber Browning machine gun, that,” another seeming telescope, “is a .50 caliber Browning and THAT,” third one, “is a M14 rifle. I’ve been taking Claus out for years now. But you know that part.” 

“What about the reindeer?” Justin asked in a very small voice. 

“Well, you don’t think reindeer can fly around the world without dropping dead from exhaustion, do you? They usually start collapsing sometime during the last leg of the journey. I only have to shoot out one of the leads in the harnesses, and the entire enterprise, blwoosh, down it goes.”

“BUT!” Justin sat up. “Wait a minute! That’s _bullshit_. I worked in the Workshop for years, every year Dancer and Prancer and all the rest, same deer!”

“Yeah, the Workshop’s a real showcase, isn’t it? The truth is, every year Claus hooks up _those_ reindeer to his sleigh and takes off to his reindeer farm in Greenland where he force breeds reindeer for the one use, then switches the Workshop reindeer for the doomed reindeer, all of whom are dead by daybreak. He used to manage to fly them back where they’d collapse and get buried by the workers on the farm; now Claus has to drag the sleigh himself from where I shoot it down. My little revenge,” Brian muttered. 

Justin was silent. Then, “Tell me again about the guns,” he commanded, rubbing against Brian’s thigh. Brian smirked. 

 

And lo! The day after Christmas dawned bright and clear, and Brian stretched himself awake around noon. It had been a successful shoot earlier that morning as the sky lightened and Santa’s exhausted reindeer had failed, once again, to avoid Brian’s expert marksmanship, and had gone down, with Santa’s curses heaped on the Abominable!Brian echoing clearly from the far horizon. Brian and Justin had cheered, and drunk too much champagne, and if the ache in his ass was any indication, Brian had finally granted Justin his original moment. Brian felt pretty damn good. Amazingly, the revelation of Santa’s chicanery had only cemented Justin’s desire to stay with Brian and not stomp off in a fit of personal… whatever. Revenge or something. Justin was usually stomping off; this time, he had declared he knew what to expect and when to expect it and that was okey dokey with him. Sounded fine to Brian. They had collapsed in bed as the sun dawned on a new day, sticky and drunk and satisfied. 

Brian smiled at the feeling of a small tongue on his cheek and opened his eyes slowly to… 

“Mew?” 

“WHUT.” 

As soon as the shock wore off, Brian could acknowledge that it was kind of cute, but it was FURRY. And, damn it, that should piss him off more. He scooped the tiny little thing in his hand and ignored how it purred and kneaded his palm, making him press it against his chest so it wouldn’t fall onto the floor. Not that he cared. But he had to take Exhibit A to Justin. Where the fuck was the little shit anyway? Where was his coffee and his morning blow job? 

Justin was in the living room. Surrounded by three reindeer in semi-collapse, warming at the fireplace. The bears peered over Justin’s shoulders (Brian glared at the smaller one who wasn’t peering in the right direction) where Justin had spread out… blue prints?

“Brian!” Justin called cheerfully. Brian walked over, glancing around. Justin nodded at the larger bear, who walked across the room and prepared a mug of coffee for Brian. Brian grabbed the cup on delivery and took a gulp. Sweet with a shot of whiskey. Fuck. He had hoped it would suck so he could yell. But it was perfect, warmth sliding down inside his throat, the kitten clutching at the outside. 

“What the fuck?” Brian asked, pausing to take another sip, adjusting the wee creature against his shoulder. “Justin, what the fuck?”

“Operation Reindeer Rescue!” Justin returned cheerfully. “We’re going over the blueprints for the barn. Clyde here,” he gestured at the smaller bear, “was a carpenter, did you know? Oh, hey, you found the kitten! It’s a barn cat,” he added quickly. “For the barn. We’re going to build. For the reindeer.” 

Brian stared. 

“Look, they’re not all dead, they just freeze to death cuz Santa abandons them. We can’t just let Santa exploit the world!! We have to rescue them!”

Brian shoved aside the-bear-who-wasn’t-Clyde, who had been crowding up against Brian’s territory far too closely. He dumped the kitten on Justin’s lap. Then he wrapped himself around Justin’s back, and leaned his chin over his shoulder, took a sip of his coffee, and looked down at the blueprints. Justin blushed. “It’s a really simple design. The blocks were kind of unchallenging, so I used to think what I could really do with wood if I had the chance.” 

“I know what I can do with wood,” Brian leered, reaching down to Justin’s lap, only to be cock-blocked by the kitten. He sighed, and dropped his forehead on Justin’s shoulder. “I thought you promised no more odes.”

Justin shook his head quickly. “Oh, no! I talked to them! Besides, Ralph’s composing a haiku for the reindeer.” 

 

THE END


End file.
